Musings posed by my iPod on a run in the park

Twenty-five years ago they spoke out and they broke out
Of recession and oppression and together they toked
And they folked out with guitars around a bonfire
Just singin' and clappin' - Man,
What the hell happened?*

Yes, a very good question, from the poetic guys of Smashmouth. I don't want to idealize the sixties, I know they were a complicated time. But from the outside looking in, I can't help but be envious. A majority of people are against the war today, but what is anyone doing about it, really? What was it like to feel like you could do something to make change, or at least like you could refuse to participate in an immoral and corrupt system? What was it like when society was full of people willing to get arrested, go into exile, break the law to try to stop their country from doing things they considered profoundly illegal and immoral?

So don't sit back kick back and watch the world get bushwhacked

Where did that sentiment go, that commitment, that sense of moral outrage? I really want to know what it's like. And why we seem to have lost it, so completely. Did we think the issue was settled, after Vietnam - never again could this happen? Or did life get comfortable; lobsters slowly boiled in the pot? Is the world just too interconnected now, too mega-incorporated, to see how to escape from the web, resign from the system?

I don't want to live in a VW bus with my dogs on ropes. I don't want to go live off the grid, grinding my own flour and putting up preserves and making macrame hammocks for pin money. I just want my government to stop killing people, please.

Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.

* Walkin' on the Sun, Smashmouth, from Fush Yu Mang